Classic Daido: A portfolio of 12 iconic images by Daido Moriyama

The Lapis Press is pleased to present Classic Daido, a new portfolio by the legendary Japanese photographer, Daido Moriyama. Classic Daido contains a selection of prints of Moriyama’s early black and white street photography, culled directly from the artist’s studio archive. The portfolio is comprised of 12 iconic images that capture Moriyama’s impulse to show the world as momentary fragments that capture the urban psyche. The selection reveals the expansiveness of his perspective and the psychological breadth of his vision, which he has called “the eyes of a dog.” Moriyama’s juxtaposition of the forgotten, surreal and infamous underscores the heightened transience of the moment. Within Moriyama’s world, the eternally fleeting present is the artist’s ultimate reality.

Years ago, in my mid-twenties, at a time when I was hopelessly enamored of snapping photographs like the quickfire of a machine gun, I encountered the novel On the Road. I was strongly drawn to the sense of Sal Paradise’s eyes as having “seen” the road, and thirsting for that life, immediately enticed a friend with a battered old Toyota to begin driving the countless roads of Japan. During this period I had chance encounters with all kinds of events and peoples and towns and I also learned to hitchhike and get lifts on trucks. Then, with my eyes fixed on the road like a pair of headlights, I became obsessed, until I found it impossible, in body and spirits, to make my way back from the road. The rhythm of my journeys came into emotional harmony with my youth, haphazardly firing the camera and I kept going, with a succession of different companions, in a furious dash of crazed days and nights of shooting.

- Daido Moriyama